Responding to a minraise with a good - but not great - hand

[NYCNative]

In the lower level NL games and tournaments, people minraise a lot. They don't do it because they are giggling with Aces, waiting for the reraise to pounce, at least not that often. More often than not, I see minraisers doing it with marginal hands - weakish suited Aces, bigger suited connectors, KQ, small pocket pairs. Stuff a tighter player folds and the average player limps with.

The problem is when you see your hole cards and you think "I'm going to raise this pot" and someone comes in before you with the dreaded minraise. The price doesn't get many people to fold nor has it defined anyone's hand very much including your own (two reasons preflop raises are goot). However, it just feels wrong to reraise with many hands that were perfectly good to raise with.

How do you handle this and why?

The way I have handled it is to raise the pot to about the level that I was going to raise it to had the post not been raised before it got to me. For example, if BB is 30 my standard raise (aware that table conditions change what is standard, but for the sake of argument) would be to 120 or so. If I have a hand that fits the above criteria (good enough to raise a pot with, not usually good enough to reraise with), I will reraise but only to 120 or maybe a shade more (like 135).

I am investing just about as much as I would have anyway, so I feel I am not losing anything. The action of a reraise gives the illusion of a stronger hand which is a good thing when the flop misses your opponents. If I get reraised, I can then evaluate whether folding would be prudent but even if I do fold then, I'm losing no more than I would have lost had I raised the unraised pot and folded to a reraise.

I feel that at the levels where I see minraisers all the time the benefits of this play outweight the drawbacks, such as when minraiser is slow-playing a monster.

What do you folks do in this situation?

[elmitchbo]

i think you're right. i follow almost exactly the same strategy you layed out. the minraise is the most frustrating thing. actually, the most frustrating thing is the min-bet. online i see people bet $20 into a $450 pot after the flop on a semi-regular basis. that's even worse..... why?!?

anyway... i think that any descent player that will respect a raise will think two things.
1. the minraise is stupid, and represents a mediocre hand from a mediocre player.
2. a solid player that makes a normal raise following a minraise is just ignoring the minraise and playing the hand normally.

i view it as an uber-limp. the (mediocre)player has a limping kind of hand, but wants to be tough and raise. i agree that the fear of a minraise from a monster should be completely discounted unless it comes from a player that is known to be a solid player capable of that kind of trickery. i do exactly what you said. reraise just a tiny bit more than my normal 3x.

[plaid]

Agreed...I hate the min-raise from early / mid position...one of the worst plays (never sure if it's a novice, or limit player). But I probably don't reraise with anything less than QQ (it all depends, I guess...maybe TT and JJ are good to raise with if it's just you and the min-raiser...can't remember being in that situation).

The one time I will min-raise is when I have a strong hand, and it's folded to me on the button or SB. I've trapped the BB who goes all-in sensing weakness (one that I remember was BB had an A7o...I had AJ) with the min-raise -- first had to set that play up with larger steal-raises on previous hands, which had begun to irritat the BB by this point.